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One table tried to leave without paying their bill, so the restaurant called the police.
Chloe Jade Meltzer describes her experience at Mugaritz as “the worst meal of (her) life.”@chloejadetravels via Instagram
Aug. 27, 2024, 2:10 AM GMT+7 / Source: TODAY
By Rachel Askinasi
Chloe Jade Meltzer dines on tasting menus regularly. She’s eaten at some of the most well-regarded restaurants in the world, including those known for being experimental.
That’s why the travel blogger was so confused by her experience at two-star Michelin restaurant Mugaritz just outside San Sebastian, Spain.
“We sat down and they seemed to be doing everything right,” Meltzer said in the first of a three-part video review posted to Instagram. At the time of reporting, the video — which teased an aside about a party who tried to leave without paying the bill, showcased soggy food and highlighted one course served in an edible but not-so-tasty belly button mold – had over 9 million views.
Meltzer tells TODAY.com in an exclusive interview she didn’t expect it to go so viral, but she hopes it will help prevent others from showing up to this 22- to 25-course dining experience with similar expectations.
She says she had known about Mugaritz for a long time prior to visiting herself. It’s been on The World’s 50 Best Restaurants list since 2006 and many of her friends — who are chefs — recommended it.
Born and raised in Napa, California, Meltzer says tasting menus were part of her life long before she started reviewing them. Many people she grew up with went on to have careers in hospitality, so the Spain eatery landed on her radar largely by word of mouth from industry folks she has come to trust.
“I just remember my friends always talking about it,” she says, adding that many of them called it “amazing” and said it was somewhere they had “always wanted to go.”
“So obviously,” she says, “I looked into it.”
Meltzer says the photos online looked great, and when her travel lined up geographically, she decided to take advantage.
“I was so surprised that there was reservations available only a couple weeks before,” she said. “But now I guess I understand why.”
She points out that while some of the reviews online might have been less than favorable, fine-dining experiences can be extremely pricey (some upwards of $500 per person) and customer expectations don’t always line up with the reality of small course portions or innovative menus. For that reason, Meltzer didn’t want to put much weight on Google reviews for Mugaritz and decided to forego looking at them altogether.
But after this experience, she says she’s “gonna definitely do more due diligence in the future.”
The team at Mugaritz, led by chef Andoni Luis Aduriz, tells TODAY.com via email that the concept of “frontier” has guided the restaurant — both geographically and conceptually — since its founding in 1998. Its working mission has always been to “expand the limits of gastronomy.”
Meltzer says the concepts and ideas behind each dish were both impressive and exciting, but the execution of flavor fell flat, which then made the entire experience fall apart for her, her table and, apparently, many of the parties around them.
“I think that the concept is good, but you’re not going there for an art exhibition — you’re going there to eat,” Meltzer says. “So I think that it’s pretty misleading when you’re charging that much for a menu that is inedible.”
TODAY.com was able to confirm that Meltzer’s party of three paid over $1,000 (807 euros) for the meal.
The restaurant’s website says a meal at Mugaritz is meant to be as playful as it is gastronomic. Meltzer says that mission didn’t translate.
“Nothing was playful about it,” she says, “It was almost confusing.”
One of the courses they found most curious was a dish the restaurant calls “The navel of the world”: a combination of almond oil and water made from a fermented milk drink served in a gelatin mold shaped like a belly button — which is eerily reminiscent of the oozing mouth dish from Bros’, another Michelin-starred restaurant that travel writer Geraldine DeRuiter very virally reviewed in 2021.
“If it was executed properly and tasted good, how funny would that be: Eating from a belly button?” Meltzer says. “I love things like that.”
The blogger added she had initially seen that, at one point, Mugaritz had a course that asked diners to peel or lick something off a face.
“I was like, ‘That is so cool and inventive’; and, usually, when there’s things like that, they taste good,” she says. “So if you’re sucking something tasty out of a belly button, nobody’s gonna have a problem with it.”
But, she says, she maintained an open mind. With every dish that came out, she was hoping for something good.
“I usually don’t do negative reviews,” Meltzer explains. “I usually try to stay away from, like, talking badly.”
“I’m not somebody that likes to ‘rage bait’ or whatever,” she continues, “but this was such a bad experience, and the fact that … they make so much money off of people, and I spoke to people who they came there for their 30th wedding anniversary or their honeymoon and then they literally get scammed and they spend so much money on this. I just think it’s wrong to put people through that. And I just felt like people should know.”
Meltzer says it was clear to her that the chef had a creative eye and talent for the precision of techniques, but the execution of flavor and texture was the missing piece.
“At this point, I think they’re just trolling people,” she says.
But Mugaritz says that’s not the case.
The restaurant shared a copy of the night’s menu with TODAY.com, and clarified that the viscous brown liquid Meltzer referrs to as “barbecue sauce” was actually “a broth made from roasted vegetables … which underwent an enzymatic process and was then thickened with kuzu (a type of starch).”
For a dish called “Drone,” a wax egg is filled with mead, flowers and cottage cheese, not “sugar water,” as Meltzer described it in her video. And the first course, the restaurant clarified, utilizes apricot oil — which Meltzer said reminded her of lipgloss in texture — in an attempt to connect the diner with nature.
“By actively joining the diner with the landscape, they must play: getting messy, capturing flowers with their hands, and licking their fingers,” the Mugaritz team tells us.
Along with unfavorable descriptions of her meal, Meltzer said her party was served some dishes repeatedly — like one made from compacted, cooked bucatini pasta, Penicillium roqueforti and walnut praline. (Team Mugaritz says, according to the service records from that night, this didn’t happen: “There may had been an internal confusion but we have no record of that.”)
She also said certain dietary restrictions were overlooked (the restaurant team tells us they take allergies and restrictions very seriously) and that she was never asked how she was enjoying the meal.
When asked if the lack of checking in was intentional, the team at Mugaritz said “in no way” would that be part of their process, adding that “During the whole menu, which includes around 23-25 proposals, our team demands constant feedback from the client with the aim of knowing if they’re having a good time and liking the dishes, and we’re always open to listen, both good and bad comments.”
While it may not have been on purpose, Meltzer says this missing piece of hospitality made her feel like there was an air of arrogance floating around the room.
“For me, it was very apparent that they don’t care,” she says. “Like, ‘We don’t really care if you like the food; eat this … and if you don’t like it or if you don’t appreciate this, then it means that you’re not one of us, like, you don’t belong, you don’t understand.’”
And that feeling of being in-the-know versus an outsider also translated to some of the other diners in the room, she says.
“It almost felt competitive,” she explains. “I felt like there were certain tables that were almost kind of trying to suck up to the waiters by proving that they liked the dishes that were coming out. It was a very weird environment.”
Once she started posting about her meal, there were plenty of people in her comments and DMs that said they had great meals at Mugaritz and suggested that she and her co-diners just didn’t get it. She also tells us that people claiming to be former Mugaritz employees messaged her to condemn her videos and say she simply missed the point and wasn’t appreciating the experience as it was meant to be had.
As for why she shared the experience, Meltzer says it felt like an obligation: “I think that people should just know and not waste their money there. They can do it at their own risk.”
The restaurant team tells TODAY.com that they haven’t seen the video affect bookings yet, but it might still be too early to tell.
“We understand and want to think that the people who have seen the video have the criteria and the capacity to understand that what you see in the video is far from being a reflection of the Mugaritz proposal,” they say. “It is their particular version of their experience.”
“There’s lots of work and respect behind everything that we do,” the team continues. “We must remember that it’s the customer’s decision to come to our restaurant; no one is forced to do so.”
And as for the one party who tried to refuse to pay, Mugaritz ended up calling the police to help diffuse the situation.
“We want to be very clear: no matter the service, whether it’s a restaurant or a hotel, whether you like it or not, you are required to pay,” the restaurant team tells us. “We cannot normalize the fact of not paying, and honestly, it’s shocking having to explain that.”
Meltzer agreed, saying even though it was “the worst meal of my life,” and she “did not want to pay $800 to feel nauseous,” she wouldn’t have even thought to skip out on the bill.
“Many people take a creative approach when visiting us, or they come with an open mind,” Mugaritz says of the video review. “And we’re sorry they didn’t enjoy the experience, but we believe they’ve been very unfair.”
